Overcast this early Tuesday on California’s north coast with rain pretty hard at times, but mostly just drizzle as the work week progresses on down the daily line.
We’re forecast for rain every day through the rest of this week and on into next — normal conditions sort of for this area, though, ‘rain,’ usually means a shimmering drizzle or just cloudy. A couple of miles inland, now they get the ‘rain.’
Encountered some site problems right away this morning, couldn’t log in or couldn’t even pull-up the homepage off the Internet. After a shower and a shave and like the ether of the Web, everything now is fine and dandy — can’t even come close to comprehending how all this shit works, from the innards of my laptop to shenanigans of the whole-wide-world InterWebs.
(Illustration found here).
In the news cycle this morning, much the same shit as yesterday. And has CNN become the shittiest major news site on the Web? Nothing but huge amounts of way-over-coverage of disaster — between the missing airliner and the sunken ferry boat, all the news that’s fit to print (display).
One thing is becoming near-perfectly clear: Iraq is sinking into an even worse nightmare. Yesterday, more than 100 people were killed in all kinds of nefarious ways across the country, and the influx of foreign suicide bombers has turned Iraq into a big, huge blood tub.
And the quack of those responsible — Tony Blair claims the 2003 invasion prevented another Syria-like situation, despite the nose on his George Jr. face.
Via the Telegraph:
But Mr Blair said: “Supposing you had left Saddam in place, I think it is reasonably arguable, surely, that you would have had the so-called Arab Spring come to Iraq.
“If it had come to Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, it was going to come to Iraq and you would be facing what you’re facing in Syria now in Iraq.”
He added: “In the end what we know now, and we can see this very clearly by the way from Libya, is that when you remove the dictatorship, that is the beginning, not the end.”
What a distasteful asshole!
After surfing more ugly, cruel and un-called-for horror news, this item popped up as a heart-clencher of an indication of the near future — the planet is in melt-down mode.
Iraq/Syria/Afghanistan/Nigeria and all other on-fire points across the globe doesn’t hold a candle in a sandstorm to our one and only environment. Via Climate Central:
April will be the first time in human history where levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide were higher than 400 parts per million for an entire month, one scientist who monitors the levels said.
And they could stay above that mark into July.
Carbon dioxide concentrations, as measured at a site atop Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano since 1958, surpassed the 400 ppm mark for the first time in recorded history on May 9, 2013.
While the particular mark is symbolic, it serves to show how far concentrations have risen from their pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm as fossil fuels such as coal and oil have continued to be burned.
“On some level, watching these milestones be passed is a lot like watching paint dry,” Jason Smerdon, a climate researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, told Climate Central in an email.
“The upward march is neither surprising nor unexpected as a direct consequence of human activities; it is only alarming in the sense that it keeps happening unabated.”
…
In another year or so, CO2 levels could still be at 400 ppm come fall, then eventually will stay above that level for the entire year, “and it will never go below 400 again,” Tans said. (Pieter Tans, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
Or at least it won’t for many centuries, as the long-lived nature of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means that its effects will be felt for many human generations, absent efforts to curb emissions or use carbon capture technologies to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, a controversial prospect.
“This is a very long-term commitment,” Tans said.
The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high consistently was anywhere from 800,000 to 15 million years ago, various studies have estimated.
And at that time, global temperatures were much warmer and sea levels were up to 100 feet higher.
“Personally, I am alarmed,” Tans said.
Every-fuckin’-body should be alarmed. Yet, it’s only Tuesday, let it wait for the weekend.